Insidious torpor

London

What is ‘a cold’? It’s such a feeble illness, so pathetic, so humiliating to admit to, that many simply refuse to suffer from it; calling it ‘the flu’. You see? It doesn’t even get to use the definite article, it’s only ‘a cold’, whereas it’s ‘the flu’.

As a result I’m never quite prepared for how unmitigatedly shitty a cold makes me feel. Attentive readers of the toadstool will know how pure and healthy my lifestyle is and so will be unsurprised that I suffer from colds infrequently; but when I do – stand back, close the blinds, clear the room, evacuate the building and do not return unless bearing LemSip.

And yet I’m always surprised when it hits. As I write I’ve just emerged from one such bout; from the moment when I reluctantly accept that mucus production has increased to unprecedented levels, and fuzzy-headedness drives me to my bed, I live in a bewildered state. Constantly surprised that I feel so incapacitated and trying to remember where I put all the bottles of syrup, pills, sachets, sprays and extra strength tissues I haven’t used since the last time.

Eventually, once I’ve gathered everything around me, so that I only need stir from my bed for calls of nature – or to pour boiling water on another dose of the life-giving LemSip – I nest. Radio 4 reminds me that there is a world beyond my darkened windows as I drift in and out of consciousness for around 48 hours.

The worst of it is that, while the initial descent into torpidity is rapid, the ascent back to humanity is slow and punctuated with reminders that you’re not yet fit to be released into polite society.

And yet, eventually, one day you realise you can take breath without an eruption of coughing, and it’s gone. You’re free. And you forget immediately how ghastly the whole episode was, allowing you to pour disdain on the next unfortunate acquaintance who cancels on you because they’ve got ‘a cold’.